Quality aspects of violin bows
Anders G. Askenfelt, Knut Guettler · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1999
The string player’s test of a bow includes four major aspects: (1) the bow should be ‘‘well balanced’’ with an appropriate total weight; (2) the bow should have a good grip of the string over the entire length of the bow stroke; (3) the ‘‘timbre of the bow’’ should be pleasing; and (4) the bow should bounce easily in advanced bowing patterns like rapid spiccato and ricochet. A poor bow will: fatigue the player by demanding too much physical effort (in particular in string crossings); tend to lose the grip of the string when approaching the tip; disguise the tonal quality of a fine instrument; and be sluggish and scratchy in rapid bouncing sequences. Some plausible physical properties which govern these four quality aspects will be presented, focusing on the last, the bouncing bow. [Work supported by School of Electrical Engineering, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm.]